Volume 5 · Issue 3

Winter, 1971-72

Fifty Additions to Blake Bibliography: Further Data for the Study
of His Reputation in the Nineteenth Century

SUZANNE R.HOOVER
:
SUDBURY, MASSACHUSETTS

Bibliographies, like other books, may be made for many reasons. But whatever may have
moved the compiler to his labors, the bibliography of a single author provides, among other things, the raw
materials for the study of that author’s reputation. Thus, the historical account of Blake’s reputation
began officially in 1921 with Sir Geoffrey Keynes’s splendid, pioneering Bibliography of
William Blake. Wide-ranging and filled with new material as it was, the Bibliography
may be seen now, not surprisingly, to have been fairly incomplete. For example, its census of Blake’s
Illuminated Books was expanded by Keynes himself in a later work,1↤
1
William Blake’s Illuminated Books: A Census, compiled by
Geoffrey Keynes and Edwin Wolf 2nd (New York: Grolier Club, 1953). and its list of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century biographical and
critical items has since been multiplied several times over. And yet, Keynes was able, through his
numerous—and, one would say, strategic—discoveries, to reveal both a breadth of interest and a lack of
interest in Blake during the nineteenth century that had not previously been suspected.

The manner of publication of Keynes’s bibliography is itself a paragraph in the
history of Blake’s reputation. This useful volume was not published in a regular edition. It was, instead,
printed for New York’s Grolier Club in a “sumptuous”2↤
2
Keynes’s own word. See his account of the making of the bibliography in
“Religio Bibliographici,” Library, 8 (1953), 64-76. edition limited to two hundred and fifty copies. Of these, fourteen were given to Keynes
to distribute among the great libraries of England and Scotland; the remaining copies were offered to Club
members at the price of seventy-five dollars. Thus, the Bibliography was accessible, outside
the Club, only to more or less determined scholars: a limitation due, surely—even if only in part—to the
fact that interest in Blake was at a rather low ebb in the second decade of this century.

But that was about to change. Within a few years of the Bibliography
(approaching the centenary of Blake’s death), several very important books on Blake were published; in the
fifty years since, appreciation of Blake has grown to an almost alarming degree—especially in the last ten
years. With so many people newly attuned to Blake’s original and prophetic voice, we have at last become
properly curious about the way in which Blake was regarded—and disregarded—in the past. Partly to answer
this need, the bibliographical study of Blake was resumed in the 1950’s by G. E. Bentley, Jr. and Martin K.
Nurmi. Their Blake Bibliography was published in 1964 in a regular edition by a university
press.3↤
3
G. E. Bentley, Jr. and Martin K. Nurmi, A Blake Bibliography:
Annotated Lists of Works, Studies, and Blakeana (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1964). It aspired to exhaustiveness in
every area it dealt with except that of commentary on Blake after 1863 (i.e., after the publication of
Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake). By thus aspiring, and particularly by making
some further strategic discoveries of early commentary on Blake, the new bibliography made a detailed history
of
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his reputation feasible for the first time. And in fact, it has provided the basis for at least two extended
studies of that fascinating subject.4↤
4
I.e., “William Blake in the Wilderness: The Early History of His
Reputation,” unpublished doctoral dissertation by the present writer, Columbia Univ., 1966; Deborah Dorfman,
Blake in the Nineteenth Century: His Reputation as a Poet from Gilchrist to Yeats (New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1969).

Perhaps a word should be said here about the efforts, past, present, and future, of
Blake bibliographers to be exhaustive. Individual items in the present list, or another list, may vary widely
in importance, but there is virtually no item that is unimportant, especially when viewed as part of the
history of Blake’s reception by succeeding generations. For example, the smallest review of Gilchrist’s
biography of Blake modifies, however slightly, our general view of the public response to it. Or, several
minor items may assume a collective importance, like the articles below by Sir Sidney Colvin that mention
Blake only briefly but which, brought together, suggest a sympathetic preoccupation with Blake on the part of
one of the most influential art critics of the late Victorian period. But happily, there are important items
in the present list, as well as minor ones. Special mention might be made of the catalogues and handbooks of
both the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition of 1857 (see items 8 and 9 below), and the International
Exhibition of 1862 (see items 11 and 13). In spite of Gilchrist’s mention of the Blakes at the Manchester
exhibition,5↤
5
Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake (London 1863),
I, 3. It might be said that the Blakes at the International Exhibition also are mentioned by “Gilchrist,” but
this is a more complicated matter. As Gilchrist died in 1861, he had nothing to say about the International
Exhibition of 1862, nor was notice of it added to the biography proper by those who completed the manuscript
left unfinished at his death. However, W. M. Rossetti, in the “Descriptive Catalogue” which formed part of the
supplementary material that made up the second volume of the Life as published, notes the
presence of works by Blake at the International Exhibition. All of the items in Rossetti’s Catalogue that
had been sent to the two exhibitions (seven works in all—see items 8 and 11 below) bear notes to that
effect. The second edition of Gilchrist in 1880 introduced into the biography itself brief notices of the
display of four paintings at the International Exhibition (Life, I [1880], 57, 274). it has been implied in our
time that Blake’s work was never publicly exhibited between 1812 and 1876.6↤
6
Nothing is listed in Keynes or in Bentley and Nurmi having to do with the
Manchester Exhibition or the International Exhibition. Bentley and Nurmi state that the so-called Blake
Revival, begun by Gilchrist, “introduced Blake to a mass audience for the very first time, both as an artist
and as a poet” (Blake Bibliography, p. 15). Although Blake’s works at these two
exhibitions were not much noticed or sympathized with, it is only fair to say that he had
been introduced to a “mass audience” as an artist before 1863. Indeed, it was a much larger audience than
Gilchrist’s was to be. An article on the exhibitions and Blake by the present writer will appear in a
forthcoming issue of the Blake Newsletter.

1796

1 Anon. “Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition against the
revolted Negroes of Surinam in Guiana . . . by Captain J. G. Stedman.” British Critic, 8
(Nov. 1796), 539.

The reviewer finds fault with some of the plates engraved by Blake, without
mentioning his name. For a detailed account of this review by the present writer, see the Blake
Newsletter, 1 (June 1967), 7-8.

1848

“I cannot remember J.(ones) [sic] Very without being reminded of
Wordsworth’s remark on William Blake, ‘There is something in the madness of this man that interests me
more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott’ ” (p. 136). The Diary, Reminiscences, and
Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, from which this remark appears to be quoted, was published in
1869. Emerson and Robinson became acquainted in 1848. See items 16 and 17 below.

1850

7 Scott, William Bell. Memoir of David Scott,
R.S.A. Edinburgh, 1850.

From David Scott’s notes: “Blake touched the infinite in expression or
signification, without distraction from lower aims, and in a kind of Christian purity. He is very abstract in
style or meaning, but very defective in execution” (p. 238). As the epigraph to his last chapter (p. 334), W.
B. Scott quotes Blake’s dedication “To the Queen” of his illustrations to Blair’s Grave
(1808). This poem was requoted by George Walter Thornbury at the end of his chapter on David Scott in
British Artists from Hogarth to Turner (London, 1861).

1857

8 Anon. Catalogue of the Art Treasures of the
United Kingdom collected at Manchester in 1857. London, 1857.

Two Blakes listed under “Drawings in Water-Colours”: “130. Oberon and
Titania on a Lily, lent by Wm. Russell, Esq.; 130a. Vision of Queen Catherine, lent by
C. W. Dilke, Esq.”

9 Anon. A Handbook to the Water Colours, Drawings,
and Engravings, in the [Manchester] Art Treasures Exhibition. London, 1857.

The Handbook is “a reprint of critical notices originally
published in ‘The Manchester Guardian.’ ” Blake is paired with R. Dadd “as examples of painters in whom a
disordered brain rather aided than impeded the workings of . . . fancy” (pp. 12-13).

1859?

A note of thanks for having been permitted to borrow the volume, with observations
on Blake’s feeling for color. Maria Denman, Flaxman’s sister-in-law, died on 23 December 1859 at the age
of eighty, which gives us the latest possible date for the letter.

1862

11 Anon. International Exhibition of 1862. Official
Catalogue of the Fine Arts Department [corrected, 1862].

Blake’s paintings were listed as “221. Christ in the Lap of Truth, and Between
his Earthly Parents . . . R. M. Milnes, Esq.; 965. Joseph Ordering Simeon to be bound . . . J. D. Coleridge,
Esq.; 966. Joseph Making himself Known to his brethren . . . J. D. Coleridge, Esq.; 967. Joseph’s Brethren
Bowing Before Him . . . J. D. Coleridge, Esq.; 968. Canterbury Pilgrimage . . . W. Stirling, Esq.” The first
of these, a tempera, was listed as an oil painting. The next three were watercolors, and the last was a
tempera listed with the watercolors.

12 P.[algrave], F.[rancis] T.[urner]. “The British School of
Water-Colour Painting.” International Exhibition of 1862. Official Catalogue of the Fine Arts
Department [Corrected, 1862], pp. 46-47.

A considerable part of this short article is taken up by a comparison of Blake with
Stothard, whose “Canterbury Pilgrimage” was also exhibited.

13 Palgrave, Francis Turner. Handbook to the Fine
Arts Collections in the International Exhibition of 1862. London, 1862.

Interesting remarks on Blake and Stothard, pp. 65-66. See the preceding item.

Negligible mention of Blake in one cryptic (misprinted?) sentence: “Blake’s
transcendental fancies are freely seen.” This review was reprinted in Robert Kempt, What Do You
Think of the Exhibition? (London, 1862).

1864

20 Anon. “On Books.” British Quarterly Review,
77 (1864), 245.

One of the earliest reviews of Gilchrist (1 January), which can be quoted here in
its entirety: “The life of an eccentric man of genius, poet and artist, full of anecdotes concerning artists
and literary people, and written in the spirit of heroworship.”

c. 1868

A one-paragraph comparison of himself to Blake, apparently prompted by the lengthy
comparison by Swinburne in his William Blake. According to the editors, this miscellaneous
jotting “is contemporary with the appearance of Swinburne’s book” (p. 53).

There is a passing reference to “the half-mad vision of William Blake” in
Good-Bye My Fancy (1891). (See Prose Works 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall, [II, 670],
in Collected Writings of Walt Whitman [New York: New York Univ. Press, 1961-].)

1873

Interesting description of Blake (p. 39) as the only successful painter in the
eighteenth century of “the sublime and the terrible.” In the next article in the series, on Fuseli
(Portfolio [1873], pp. 50-56), that artist is compared with Blake (p. 50).

In Colvin’s Memories & Notes of Persons & Places,
1852-1912 (London, 1921) there is an account of Colvin’s visit to Trelawny (1792-1881) in February
1881. Trelawny “declared his great admiration for William Blake . . . ” and then stood to recite “London” (pp.
250-51).

31 Anon. “Art.” Atlantic Monthly, 31 (March
1873), 370-73.

An article on varied topics, including a review of Sidney Colvin’s
Children in Italian and English Design (1772). Blake is the central figure of this review.

1874

32 Rossetti, W. M. “News and Notes.” Academy,
6 June 1874, p. 645.

Report of the discovery of Blake’s original illustrations for Young’s
Night Thoughts.

Review-notice of the Blake exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club: “This
collection is the largest and most varied we have ever seen. . . . ” The review concludes with this note: “At
the conversazione held by the Graphic Society in University College on the 8th, there was
also exhibited a goodly collection of Blake’s works; but, to the honour of the members of the Burlington be
it said, the great proportion of the pictures came from their club.”

36 Symonds, John Addington. The Letters of John
Addington Symonds. Ed. Herbert M. Schueller and Robert L. Peters, 3 vols. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1967-69.

Ecstatic reference, apparently to the Blakes at the Burlington Fine Arts Club
exhibition (II, 417 [May 1876]). Also, there is an interesting allusion to Blake’s illustration “Help!
Help!” from For the Sexes: the Gates of Paradise (II, 590 [1879]; III, 504 [1890].

1886

Before he wrote these letters, Melville had been compared to Blake at least twice.
See review of Clarel, New-York Daily Tribune, 16 June 1876; and W. Clark Russell, “Sea
Stories,” Contemporary Review, 46 (1884), 343-63. On p. 357 of Russell’s article
Moby Dick is compared to “a drawing by William Blake . . . madly fantastic in places, full of
extraordinary thoughts, yet gloriously coherent.”

In Jay Leyda, The Melville Log (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951),
there is the following note: “New York, June 4 [1870], M[elville] acquires Alexander Gilchrist’s
Life of William Blake” (II, 712).

45 Anon. Critic, 6 (1886), 91.

An indignant note accusing Mr. Alfred H. Combe of having plagiarized a “design for
the interior decoration of a family tomb” in the Decorator and Furnisher for July 1886 from
Blake’s design for The Grave entitled “Death’s Door.”

There are more Critic notes and reviews in the ‘nineties.
Perhaps the most interesting of these is a review-notice of an exhibition of drawings and sketches by Blake,
Turner, and Gainsborough at Keppel’s. “The Blake drawings, which are the most important, belong to Dr.
Charles E. West of Brooklyn . . . ” (12 [1892], 188). The remaining items are as follows: 15 (1891), 85 and
116; 16 (1891), 60; 20 (1893), 86; 21 (1894), 4.

1893

48 Anon. “William Blake.” Nation, 57 (16
November 1893), 367-77.

Review of William Blake: His Life, Character, and Genius, by
Alfred T. Story (1893).

49 Anon. “Fine Arts. The Works of William Blake. By E. J. Ellis
and W. B. Yeats.” Athenaeum, 30 December 1893, pp. 920-21.

Review of the Quaritch edition (1893).

1905

Of the nine letters that contain Blake references, seven were written to John
Sampson in connection with Raleigh’s preface to Sampson’s Oxford edition of Blake’s Lyrical
Poems (1905). All the important letters were written in 1905.

Print Edition

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